The carriages and the occupants of them were attacked by such volleys of stones and mud, and the animus of the people was so evidently malevolent and dangerous, that they were at once driven from the scene, and any repetition of the practice was forbidden.
It is so remarkable as to be, at all events, worth noting, that contemporaneously with this singular deterioration in respect to crime, another social change has taken place in Florence.

_La Gentile Firenze_ has of late years become very markedly the home of clericalism of a high and aggressive type.

This is an entirely new feature in the Florentine social world.

In the old time clerical views were sufficiently supported by the Government to give rise to the famous Madiai incident, which has been before alluded to.

But clericalism in its more aggressive aspects was not in the ascendant either bureaucratically or socially.